The game

As an institution, Ace Academy subscribed only to meritocracy. The students were all the brightest. Intelligence was the only key into the proud school. There wasn't a back door, even for the President.

Still, it was a school. The students were children. Even smart, teenagers were teenagers. But even the stupidity was quite different. And so, the start of the game could be clearly pointed at.

A morning of August discovered a box that was only big enough to hold a tennis ball, neatly wrapped in black, placed on the teacher's table in the front of every class. Inside was a single sheet of white paper, torn from the standard notebooks prescribed by the school, folded to a fourth. Unfolded, the paper revealed a single sentence. A single secret. The game was simple – find whose secret it was.

11-B's first secret was that someone loved black thorned underwear. It was funny, because there was no black thorned underwear. Black Rose was a popular brand. It was risqué. The company called the brand an indulgence of dark delinquency. The school didn't declare regulations on the underwear students wore. It was the students who put themselves up to unspoken and unclear expectations. Risqué was for later, after graduation. And so, the person who loved the black thorned underwear was in for a terrible time.

**

MenMen was staring into the light brown eyes of a brown haired girl in the mirror.

"What's going on?"

The answer came from the mirror, in the voice of Gwen.

"The first mission. She is the client."

"Gwen," MenMen said. "Why do I know her name?"

Gwen looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly," MenMen said. "What do you mean."

In the long silence that followed, the girls studied each other carefully.

Gwen was sixteen. She was going through a spurt of acne. Didn't do much in terms of damaging her prettiness. In fact, coupled with the untidy hair, it lent her a rustic kind of beauty.

"If only she had large, round glasses on her eyes," MenMen said unconsciously. "She'd be inhumanly pretty. Why did I say that?"

"Because it's what you heard," Gwen answered.

"Dot?" MenMen asked slowly.

"Yeah," Gwen answered immediately.

"I feel strange."

"Seems there's an unexpected complication."

"Unexpected?"

"Right. Sorry." Gwen looked apologetic. "Not truly unexpected. It was within calculations. But it was ascertained a very low probability. Anyway, doesn't matter. We're here."

MenMen sighed, and Gwen sighed too. Only now was it starting to sink in, that MenMen was staring into a mirror.

"So, why are we here?"

"Gwen is our client," Gwen answered cheerfully. "She cried for help. And here we are."

"Go on."

"The black thorned underwear is hers." Gwen paused. "Wait. You're her now. So, yours actually."

"Yeah. So?"

"I hear what you are saying. But this is only the beginning."

**

11-B was among the last to uncover their first secret. By the time they discovered Gwen, many classes were well into the second round. That increased the hate for Gwen. She was now the risqué girl who was causing the class' defeat.

The boys and girls were all far too smart to bully. But the coldness that came easy was much worse. Their words were unsheathed swords swung relentlessly at Gwen. Every swing drew blood. Gwen was dying of a thousand cuts. She would have survived it all, still. If not for that night five weeks later, when she was dragged out of her dorm, naked but for her black thorned underwear. It was the girls. But they dragged her up to the roof, where they left her under the wide eyes of both boys and girls.

The next morning, Gwen was found under the building, dead on the ground stained red with her blood. She was still naked but for her underwear. The official position was that she had killed herself out of humiliation. And that was the end of the game.

There was more to the truth. She hadn't jumped off of the roof. The previous night, she had been shamed. The assaulters had stopped short of actual penetration, but their actions until then had been blatant molestation. Even her falling off wasn't true. She had been pushed. Made to fall off.

Gwen's last action, before she was dragged out of the dorm, was finding the Dark Blue Sky.

**

"Revenge, is it?"

Gwen shook her head. "No. Not revenge. I don't care about them. I just want to survive. I want to escape. I want to be saved. I hate to admit it, but I'm not strong enough."

MenMen nodded. "I am. I'll do better. Than surviving. Than escaping. Than being saved. Let's have you become stronger. Let's burn the game to the ground, and with it all those bastards drunk on it."

Gwen smiled. MenMen was grinning wide. The only word to describe the madness on her face was evil. Slowly, Gwen's grin mirrored it. It was the moment when MenMen became Gwen. And the moment the mission began.